Fighting in the Heart of Liberal Madison for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This blog will focus on liberal hypocrisy and the small, but significant victories of the right at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

24 January 2006

Are you a South Park Republican?

Update: Bill from Madison, the anti-government comment king, has his South Park character here.

Okay, I will be honest. I found this link to create your own South Park character and I had to come up with a post to have an excuse to have a picture of me as a South Park character (that's me above). So, here it goes:

The talking heads have been throwing around the term "South Park Republican" for a couple of years now. What is a South Park Republican?

The term "South Park Republican" has thus become popular among a handful of pundits to describe young Americans who interpret the show's values as being parallel to their cause. They see themselves as being more populist and far less puritanical than many other conservative groups (e.g. the religious right). Trey and Matt say they are extremely grateful for the 15 half-hours of airtime that Comedy Central annually affords them because it gives them a "bullhorn to yell at America."

The phrase, "You know? I've learned something today..." is the trademark line, used in nearly every episode, to outline the South Park solution to the current moral crisis. South Park Republicans empathize with the characters' consideration of moral guidelines in their attempts to explain their surroundings and are extremely likely to support the "children's" decisions.

Basically, it is a moderate Republican. Another article goes on to say that a South Park conservative is an average American.

Half of the voting public is Republican. They watch R rated movies, enjoy a few drinks at happy hour, and even go to the occasional Wrestlemania. Hopefully, the South Park Republicans will shatter the unfair stereotype and set the record straight. As Cartman would say, That would be pretty sweet.

This is a hard one for me. I do enjoy R rated movies, a few drinks at happy hour, and I love South Park. But I would not consider myself a moderate. So I'm up in the air. Are you a South Park Conservative? More importantly, what would you look like if you were a South Park Conservative character?

8 Comments:

I have always interpreted the term to describe a conservative (not Republican) whose political stance stems less from tradition, rearing, religion, etc., and more from an everyday logical assessment of issues. For as we all know, when one sits down and really thinks about these things, it's practically impossible to be a liberal. :)

I am the ONLY (small-l) libertarian that blogs anywhere in Madison, to the best of my knowlege. You are not a libertarian anymore than the "Libertarian National Socialist Green Party" (aka NAZI PARTY) are "libertarians."

A libertarian is a partisan of liberty. Everyone else here supports the state in innumerable ways, yourself included. In fact, the term "Libertarian" was hijacked by a group of right-wing economists in the 1950s, before which it universally referred to Anarcho-Syndicalism (which it still does in every country outside the United States)

If you measure the power of the state by the level of taxes, then you are not really a libertarian. Even the most radical right-wing libertarians are more concerned with executive power, with the police, with state-backed corporate monopoloy, and with war than they are with cutting taxes a few percentages. The IRS is a militarized police agency, for crying out loud. It wouldn't matter how high congress set the tax rate, if the IRS had no teeth, no one would bother paying their taxes anyways.

How do you propose society functions without people paying taxes? How do businesses operate? What happens if someone signs a contract and chooses not to fulfil his obligations?

How do you buy your computer? How do you pay for it? Who puts together the computer? Who develops the chips? Who will risk 10-20 years of R&D with the risk of never developing a useful product? (GM and Ford have huge R&D facilities where people spend much of their lives doing research on products that never get developed). Why would anyone take this risk in a system without money, corporations, or business?

Where do you get the steel and silicon to build the parts for the computer? What if there is a risk to finding the minerals used in the computers? What if there are huge upfront capital costs to building that mine? What if the venture is unsuccessful? (Ie. What if people are not willing to do enough work in exchange to justify the costs of your mine?)

You cannot rail against corporate "monopolies" without offering an alternative.